EPL Insurance isn’t just for Big US Companies

Samantha Rodrigues says even a volunteer with no paycheck can prompt a claim your EPL policy is supposed to cover.

As written by Branislav Urosevic on insurancebusinessmag.com

Employment practices liability insurance carries a reputation problem long before it ever gets discussed on its merits. Many employers picture it as coverage built for a narrow slice of the business world – large, publicly traded, US-headquartered companies – and assume it has little to do with them. That assumption is incorrect, and it’s the first thing Samantha Rodrigues, AVP of executive risk at HUB International, has to provide education on in most conversations about the coverage.

“One of the biggest misconceptions is that we see often is that employment practices liability, or EPL, is that it’s for large US public companies,” Rodrigues said. “The reality is actually quite the opposite.” Any organization with people in an employment relationship – employees, potentially volunteers, regardless of company size – carries  this exposure, whether or not it’s structured as a traditional for-profit business.

That assumption, Rodrigues said, tends to travel with a second one: that EPL only matters for a catastrophic, headline-grabbing scandal.